No More Paper Charts

[RobLL]

A half way decent old fashion marine compass, even if not boxed, is also an essential. It makes it a lot easier to maintain a straight course, either in the fog or (for me) even if it is clear.

[thataway]

[Micahbigsur@msn.com]

Hmmm....after years of non use we just sold our sextant, maybe a bit to soon?
A paper chart with the land mass and shore objects will always be useful in an emergency a hand bearing compass (I like the hockey puck type) or I like horizontal sextant angles off adjacent shore objects, dividers and a nautical rule, if you can see land you won't be lost without electronics. These take up almost no space on the boat and give me a feeling of always being prepared. They are having a lot of trouble in Europe with jammers used by people on shore that don't want their employers seeing them hanging out at the beach instead of driving their routes. These are having an affect on marine AIS in heavily trafficked areas. I am curious about what will happen to autonomous cars with the occasional GPS glitches we already have, imagine an LA freeway with a few seconds glitch that dosen't affect our boats.....

[thataway]

Although GNSS (GPS) is used in autonomous land vehicle navigation, it is not precise enough for city traffic or even highways--3 meters is a long way on a 2 lane highway with steep shoulders. There are other systems, including on board, differential local GPS, encrypted GPS, LIDAR, inertial and other systems, so there is a lot of redundancy. 5G will be a factor in cities, when it becomes available.

One of the reasons I purchased Sat Nav (Transit) when it first come out in1982 even though it was "out of my price range"--was that I realized that there are a lot of days, where even one good celestial may not be possible. I was fortunate that a friend of mine was a vice president of Magnavox, and he sold me his MX 4102, at his cost, and then got another one a few months later. Often low lying reefs and atolls are just not visible by eye or on Radar especially at night (and the reason for a lot of groundings before GPS and good charting).

[Micahbigsur@msn.com]

In Fiji in the 70's nobody ever tried to thred the needle between all the reefs and islands, we always took the long way around with celestial navigation, now people think they can pass through 1/2 mile gaps even at night and more boats than ever are going on the reefs. (Over 300 reported in Latitude 38 a few years ago, sounds crazy). OK, more boats are out cruising now....but would there be without GPS chartplotters? It doesn't require any great seamanship or navigation skills to cruise in the modern era, hence so many more boats on the rocks.
I do love my tablet and chartplotter, and keeping a safe distance off in sketchy charted areas is still a residual habit. We are often "anchored on land" in Mexico and rocks can be up to 1/2 mile off the chartplotter position, more on our old original c-map.
Am I now an old curmudgeon, maybe so....

[pcg]

Print your own. You can print out just the areas you want, with just the layers you want. I recently cleaned house and threw out all my topo maps and nautical maps.

I do a lot of hiking and have eagerly embraced the abundance of electronic maps now available. Caltopo and an iPhone with the Gaia app are game changers for hikers. Being an old-school navigator I don't feel comfortable venturing forth w/o a paper map and compass so I always print out paper copies to take with me. I'll do the same with nautical maps when I start venturing forth in my [restoration in progress] C-Dory.

[Micahbigsur@msn.com]

Paul, I am never giving up my backup charts for the west coast. I am reminded here to order some basic Florida charts as we are hoping to be there next year. I'm sure there will be chart books and chart printers in the future.

[flrockytop]

Wasn't there talk a couple of years ago about building a new LORAN type land based system?

Roger

[thataway]